Archive for September, 2017

The White Trash in the White House

He is Violating the Constitution and Breaking the Law!

Unable to restrain himself from cutting the fool in public, and perpetually playing to the cheap seats with a promoter’s eye for who is in his audience, Donald J. Trump, the accidental insane President of the USA, spoke to a gathering of his hard-core enablers in the cultural backwaters of Alabama. Here in this bastion of the old slave holding Confederacy, a state which has given us such flawed statesman as Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, an unreconstructed neo-Confederate redneck – whom Trump appointed Attorney General and now is trying to turn back the clock on Civil Rights – it should come as no surprise that Donald Trump, a con-man who resorts to race baiting whenever he deems it politically advantageous, should be enthusiastically received when he makes thinly veiled racist comments.

Lost in the legislative sauce in Washington, where he has not shepherded a single piece of major legislation through Congress – Repealing Obamacare; rebuilding infrastructure; tax reform, etc. And he has shown no greater ability to make a deal with the federal courts, which have blocked his travel bans barring Muslims from entering the US. Furthermore, many of his close associates and family members are under investigation by the FBI, four congressional committees in the House and Senate, a federally appointed Special Prosecutor, and the dogged New York State Attorney General Eric Schniederman – who has had so much success going after Trump’s wrong doing in the past.

So, feeling ineffective and unloved in Washington, and knowing that hordes of hecklers and haters await him every time he sets foot in his home town, the narcissistic Don fled to the boonies where the hayseeds are still dazzled by this Big Apple bunko artists out to sell them a bill of fake goods wrapped in bogus dreams. And like all good con men, Dirty Donnie knows just what buttons to push to lure his marks into the trap.

In this case his game was to wrap himself in the flag and football, declare himself the keeper of the patriotic flame and defender of American soldiers – although he is a draft dodging coward and shameless charlatan who threw veterans off the sidewalk when they were selling their wares in front of Trump Tower, insulted a Muslim Gold Star family, and dissed Senator John McCain’s heroic military service. Alas, there is no shame in Dirty Donnie’s game.

Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota and a real badass Navy Seal, vehemently rejects the idea that athletes, students or anybody else should be compelled to stand for the National Anthem or pledge allegiance to the flag. He points out: “Nazi’s required people to salute the flag or stand and sing the national anthem! Democracies must win the respect of their citizens. Ventura recalls that when he was Minnesota’s governor the legislature passed a bill requiring school children to salute the flag and recite Pledge of Allegiance, “and I vetoed it!”

Yet this fake patriot, Dirty Donnie, claims that real soldiers were dishonored when those black “sons of bitches” decided to kneel while the National Anthem is played to call attention to racial injustice and white privilege in America. It tells us all that we need to know about his values and character – or lack thereof – that he calls young black men non-violently protesting the murder of their brethren by white cops who are set free by racist white juries “sons of bitches,” while assuring us that there were “many fine people” among the torch bearing neo-Nazi’s reciting the Nazi slogan “Blood and Soil,” and anti-Semitic slogans like “Jews will not replace us!”

How Trump Feels about Protesters

This tells the thoughtful person all they need to know

Yet, by urging fans to boycott teams and admonishing owners to “fire” players who take a knee during the performance of the Star-Spangled Banner, Trump is violating the First Amendment to the Constitution he has sworn to defend “against all enemies foreign and domestic.” And he may well have broken federal labor laws prohibiting politicians – in the executive and legislative branches – from interfering in the relations between employers and employees. Trump is such a scatter-brained blabbermouth he even attacked the safety measures agreed upon by owners and players to prevent serious injuries to the athletes that play the game.

It is a violation of our labor laws that can result in a 15-year prison sentence and removal from office. Yet Trump has a long record of flaunting the law, from mobbed up real estate deals to laundering dirty Russian money; in fact, his attitude to obeying the law is so Cavalier that, as I write, the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Chuck Rosenberg, has announced that he has quit his post because the “President has no respect for the law.”

However, this kerfuffle over football and the flag raises some deeper questions about Donald Trump’s fitness for the presidency. At a time when the US and its Caribbean territories have been ravaged by devastating hurricanes wreaking havoc on a biblical scale, Donald Trump has had but little to say about making the afflicted people whole again. Their have been five times as many tweets criticizing NFL players as addressing the tragic disaster in Puerto Rico.

Instead, the fuzzy headed megalo-maniacal buffoon in the Oval Office has devoted valuable time and attention to slinging mud at Golden Gate superstar guard Steph Curry – a consummate gentleman and solid citizen- for refusing an invitation to the White House for a celebration of their NBA championship. DD is such a petty pouty old fat fool that nothing in the world is more important than his insatiable ego! I say cheers for Steph who refused to be used as a prop for Trump’s photo-op, which the Republican PR machine would exploit to show how Trump is cool with black folk.

The main problem with Trump, besides his lack of a moral core and ignorance of policy matters, is an absence of principled beliefs about politics and governance; his allegiance is dictated by expedience. A “malignant narcissist,” what matters most to Trump is “winning”…. however he defines it at the time. This moral turpitude is made worse by his abysmal ignorance of the basics of government. Alas, the blabbermouth bubble-head buffoon does not even understand how American democracy is structured and how it is supposed to work…which is a reflection of his ghastly and dangerous ignorance of the US Constitution!

Trump does not understand the separation of powers, the system of checks and balances, or Constitutional guarantees under the Bill of Rights. All he really knows is real estate; it is the family business. And even when he went off to college at the academically distinguished University of Pennsylvania, one of the world’s great centers of humane learning, the joker went for two years and only studied Real Estate! Despite being at the prestigious Wharton School of Finance he was not at all intellectually curious. Hence real estate, not government, is where his expertise lies. Yet given his multiple bankruptcies many successful businessmen – Mitt Romney, Mike Bloomberg and Warren Buffet among them – do not think highly of his skills as a businessman either. None of these men said they would hire Trump as the CEO of their corporations.

The fundamental question raised by this fact is: If none of Trump’s peers in the business world – most of them far more successful than Trump – would make him CEO, yet business is his lifelong business, it is unreasonably to expect him to be an effective President of the USA. The careful observer of his behavior in office can easily the he is clueless! This is why Donnie Dimwit picks fights with Congress, disses the Courts, disregards the Constitutional protection for press freedom, encourages police brutality toward citizens, and threatens to order American military forces to commit war crimes by suggesting that they murder the families of Jihadists.

Trump is a shameless hypocrite, crook and compulsive liar who draws a moral equivalence between fascist and anti-fascist, and publicly calls for ESPN to fire black female sportscaster Jemele Hill, for accurately calling him a “White Supremacist” on her Twitter feed. Although, without any evidence to support the charge, he called President Obama “a racist” several times when he was hosting a national TV show – and even challenged his right to be President in a racist campaign denying President Obama’s citizenship!

Yet there was NO outcry for him to be fired from his popular reality show: “The Apprentice” In fact, this blatantly racist charade against Barack Obama – a great president – catapulted Dumb Donnie Dimwit into the Oval Office!!! And this treacherous duplicity, created from blatant lies and nurtured on racist bigotry, sustains him in office today….despite his proclivity to dance with Nazi’s, lie compulsively about things large and small, poses a danger of getting us into an accidental nuclear war, and trifle with American law.

Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem, New York

September 27, 2017

Lost Souls Seeking A Savior

Republicans Are Trying to Shoot the Wounded

As I write the leaders of the Republican GOP – Grand Obstructionist Party – are huddling in a dastardly conspiracy to KILL the Affordable Health Care Act i.e. Obamacare. They are rushing through a bill that has not been scored by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. They are doing this because they don’t want the public to know that millions of Americans will lose their healthcare insurance, and thus their ability for them or their children to see a doctor!

And yet these foul hearted motherfuckers have the unmitigated gall to claim they are Christians! They will be in church on Sunday singing hymns and thumping on the Bible while some blasphemous charlatan in robes reads the scriptures. The fact that their dicks don’t all shrink and their balls fall off, and their females don’t grow fangs in their vagina’s to chomp off their balls in the most painful fashion, IS THE REASON WHY I DO NOT BELIEVE THEIR IS A WISE AND JUST GOD PRESIDING OVER THE UNIVERSE!!!!

Governors that preside over states representing the majority of the American people have vociferously come out AGAINST this bill – despite the fact that the Republican scoundrels have promised to give them generous block grants to do with as they wish! And all the major professional organizations also oppose it.
Yet the Republicans in the Senate, like that slimy South Carolina scoundrel Lindsay Grahamn – are twisting arms to get every Republican senator to vote for this atrocious bill that threatens to WRECK our healthcare system, with no greater purpose than giving tax cuts to the rich!!!

And should they get this atrocity through the Senate Donnie Asshole has promised to sign it….so desperate is this clueless clown to get a major legislative “Victory!” It will be a pyrric victory for the deluded slubs that voted for Donnie A, alas they got Trump…and they gonna git so brutally fucked he’s gonna break his dick off in them!!! These sad, pathetic, morally demented, cretins who voted for him thinking they had found their savior got what they deserved.

But what really pisses me tha fuck off is that they are gonna take millions of us down with them And for those who were too politically and morally “pure” to vote for Hillary EAT SHIT AND DIE!!!! In politics one must accept the lesser evil….and this should have been a piece of cake in the last election: BECAUSE CHOOSING HILLARY OVER DONALD TRUMP WAS AS EASY AS CHOOSING GOD OVER THE DEVIL!!!!

Corny West: A Bushy Headed Showman

He should be denouncing the false theology of the Christian Right!

Hence I blame all of the so-called “progressives,” black and white, who helped elect Trump by not supporting Hillary, for this disaster that will cost many innocent lives. In fact, I hold them in greater contempt than the snaggle tooth, cousin fucking, po ass white trailer trash….they didn’t know any better! But verbose misguided ASSHOLES like Corny West, A former Harvard Professor, should have known better!

So I don’t want to hear ANY of their mealy-mouthed SOPHISTRY about why they couldn’t vote for the Democrats. It doesn’t matter that Trump’s supporters were coming from the Right of the Political spectrum, and the self-styled “progressives” were coming from the left: It’s a distinction without a meaningful difference!!! IT’S ALL BULLSHIT!!! MAY THEY ALL DIE THE DEATHS OF POLE CATS AND STINK THEIR WAY TO HELL!!!!! YES I SAID IT! I MEANT IT!! AND I’M READY TO REPRESENT IT!!!!

Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem New York

September 20, 2017

Marching Against White Supremacy in Charlottesville Virginia

A White Priest Preaches to Whites about Racial Justice

Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest.

“God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have.

I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.” NRSV Genesis 45:1-15

Jesus went to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.” NRSV Matthew 15:21-28
“Breaking the Tyranny of Sin”

Almighty God, you have broken the tyranny of sin and sent into our hearts the Spirit of your Son. Give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service that all people may know the glorious liberty of the children of God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today’s prayers teach us something profound about being a Christian. They tell us that God has broken the tyranny of sin, and we ask for grace to live in that freedom from tyranny, as faithful inheritors of the Kingdom that’s been promised to us. What does it mean, what does it take, to break the tyranny of sin? And how do we live our lives in a way that shows that we are free from the ruthless hold that sin can have on us?
This morning we heard the end of the Joseph story. Joseph was betrayed by his own brothers. They sold him as a slave, and he could have been dead for all they knew. Yet he forgave them, embraced them and saved their whole tribe from starvation. Joseph broke the tyranny of sin. This story is a pivotal change in the whole thrust of the Old Testament. It was normal in that society, to be competitive. It was normal to put yourself and your own family first. It was normal to get revenge, and they even had lists of rules about how much revenge you were allowed to take on another family or tribe. But Joseph was close to God’s heart and he took a completely different path.

Love, forgiveness and grace shattered the cruel, tyrannical hold sin had on that family. And then in today’s gospel, we follow Jesus up the coast, from familiar territory up into Tyre and Sidon – foreign lands. And a woman from a different race, from a foreign religion with strange customs, insinuates herself in Jesus’ path and demands attention. We’re not used to Jesus being snippy with people, but he gives her a hard time, suggesting that his healing is exclusive – it’s only for the chosen people of God.

What a slap in the face! Was Jesus having a bad day? Did he mean to push her away like that? But she persisted…even the dogs get the children’s crumbs, she said. And look what happens here – look how quickly Jesus heals her daughter. Instantly. That very moment. So, did her retort change his mind, or was Matthew up to something clever in how he shaped this story?

Perhaps the exchange was about teaching the disciples back then, and you and me now – teaching us to recognize our own tendency to ignore people we think of as outsiders. The disciples felt no responsibility for this woman’s problem. She’s not one of us, she worships foreign gods and strange idols, so we won’t waste God’s grace here. We owe her nothing so let’s move on.

To see what the author is up to here, let’s step back and look at Jesus’ whole ministry. All throughout the gospels, Jesus consistently crashed through the boundaries and barriers humans put up against one another…..bringing the ‘sinful’ blind man into the Synagogue and then we found out that he wasn’t the sinful one – it was the religious leaders who had excluded him; then Jesus chose the shamed women at the well to bring God’s truth to the whole town; he had dinner with people that the religious leaders thought were unworthy – hookers and charlatans; and the most interesting part – in a society where the only people lower on the social scale than the shepherds were the fishermen, and Jesus chose a bunch of them as his disciples.

The list goes on and on – whoever was excluded, Jesus pulled right into the centre of the community. This looks like a very intentional story, designed to show Jesus, once again, crashing through the tyranny of sin by including someone the disciples wanted to exclude. So, how do we live this out? Today we’re taught to stretch our understanding of who’s in, who belongs, who is worthy, who God includes…a message the world is crying out for, right now.

Today both Joseph and Jesus say no to hateful exclusion – Joseph won’t exclude his treacherous brothers. Jesus won’t exclude the foreigner who worships strange idols. I so appreciated Judy’s entry in this week’s Happenings. Judy sent us a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” Judy was accurately taking the pulse of our times.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Washington March

A 20th Century Prophet Speaking Truth to Power

When there’s trouble in the world, it takes commitment to stand up and speak out, and to bring change. And Judy’s not the only one responding to the chaos of Charlottesville. In fact, most of the world, including Christian leaders from many countries, are responding to what happened – not only because Heather Heyer died, but because the vilest form of hate – represented by the swastika and the white robes of the KKK – has risen up to claim a voice in the streets of that powerful country that sets itself up as the moral leader of the world – a form of hate which many veterans gave their lives to resist in the war – a form of hate that led to the slaughter of millions – a form of hate that would string a man up, torture, mutilate and kill him because of the colour of his skin. These things happened – we humans did this to one another – and not so long ago.

Heather Heyer

Murdered by Nazi’s in America standing up for Justice

American Exceptionalism…

Torch Bearing Nazis March in the Night in 2017!

My friends, this has nothing to do with politics, because we know that there’s good and bad in every political platform. This has to do with right and wrong! This has to do with a rising ethos of white supremacy that decent human beings thought had been at least quieted decades ago. This has to do with decent people saying it’s not okay that our Jewish or Asian or Brown or Black brothers and sisters are pushed aside. And for you and me, this has to do with Christians taking a stand against something that is in complete opposition to everything Jesus taught.

It’s hard for me, for white people, to see the severity of this threat of white supremacy, because it doesn’t threaten me – it doesn’t personally or directly threaten me. Those of us with white privilege can live our lives blindly and happily completely unaware of what’s happening to other people. It’s so easy for us to say “Everything looks just fine to me – what’s all the fuss about?”
We must take a hard lesson from history here, and remember early Nazi Germany, when the Christian Church turned a blind eye as the government slowly and insidiously started segregating the Jewish people. First, they made it mandatory that they be marked with patches of the Star of David, and arm bands, taking away their autonomy by denying them the right to individual anonymity.

Then you’d find that your Jewish neighbors no longer lived in their house next door because they were pulled out of their homes, away from their possessions, and gradually isolated, pushed out to the fringes of the cities. Their rights were compromised one by one, until they had lost their freedom. There was a slow and steady normalization of placing the Aryan race above, and Jews and others beneath. But why should the church be concerned? It wasn’t affecting them. Can we hear that?

The Signs of those Terrible Times were EVERYWHERE!

But the Church Turned it’s Head!

Just like the rise of White Supremacists and the re-emerging KKK doesn’t affect us white people right now. Back then, the church was left alone by the powers in charge, and so they bought the deal. And to this day, they bear the shame and the guilt of that choice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer didn’t buy it, though. He was a humble German pastor who spoke out against the evil of Hitler because he saw where it was heading – to the ruthless torture, degradation and slaughter of millions of innocent human beings. He stood up and said, “Christians! Wake up! This is as far away from the gospel as one can get!” He was executed in prison for speaking out.

Reverend Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A Righteous German Churchman who Gave his Life Opposing Hitler

I’m not going to talk about how or why these hate groups have felt empowered to rise up again – that would take hours – but every expert out there is telling us that they are rising up again, threatening to become much bigger than Charlottesville. As of yesterday, there were at least 9 more rallies planned by white supremacists across the States. And here in Canada, there are similar rallies planned in Vancouver and Montreal, and the Canadian white supremacy websites are lighting up like a carnival.

Similar things are happening in England and elsewhere, so I’m afraid, my friends, that this is a thing. It’s happening. To be indifferent at this time in history when the whole world is challenging what’s happening just south of us – to be indifferent is just as dangerous to our moral integrity as it was for those Christians in Nazi Germany. But don’t take my word for it…here’s what Christian leaders and others are saying….
Debra Kolb says the opposite of love is not hate, its indifference. To be silent is to take a side.

One of the most respected Christian leaders and theologians of our time, Brian McLaren, says, clergy, church leaders, it’s time. It’s actually past time. It would have been good if Christians had seen throughout history that loving their Indigenous and African American neighbors would not mean genocide or enslavement or white supremacy or lynching. But we failed to understand the most basic message of Christ’s teaching … love for everyone – no exceptions. So white supremacy became systematically embedded in our systems and structures and we see the results today. It’s long past time for Christians to resist.
Long-respected news anchor Dan Rather says he covered the civil rights movement in the 60’s and he says tragically, what happened in Charlottesville demonstrates that history might be repeated. He remembers that Dr. Martin Luther King felt that if people who are unaffected by racism could see the true depth of the hatred, could see what it looked like, they would recoil. But he says, we are once again peering into an abyss. Perhaps we needed to see how easily our moral order can break down. This is a moment for moral clarity – a time for everyone to line up and be counted. Are you on the side of love or hate? The world is watching. History is watching. I hope we’re up to the challenge, he says, and I think we are.

A huge gathering of North American Christian clergy made this statement: All humans are created in the image of God, and yet in Charlottesville, white hatred, anti-Semitism and violence were on bold display. This hateful rally of white supremacists seeks to destroy the very soul of the country. White supremacist beliefs, the KKK, Neo-Nazis, the alt-right, are antithetical to our scriptures. One cannot serve God and embrace hate and inequality. Most importantly, one cannot be silent.
Our own Anglican Primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz says: The events in Charlottesville, Virginia and the very real threat of more activities on the part of white supremacy movements, have been a painful reminder that racialized violence is a sad reality of our time, not only in the United States, but in our own country too. The escalation of racial tension causes great anxiety. Let us pray for the Church’s witness in the midst of this growing crisis. May we be united, courageous and unwavering, in denouncing racism and in proclaiming the God-given dignity all people deserve.

My regular theologians, Dr’s. Lewis, Skinner and Jacobsen said this: This is a moment when the church has to speak up. We cannot be vague and careful about this; we can’t be afraid because some people want church to be comfortable and safe. We must be faithful to the gospel we are paid to preach. White supremacy is a sin in all its forms, rooted in the worst, most erroneous theology imaginable. If the church does not speak up against Neo Nazism, the KKK, white supremacy and anti-Semitism, we will be complicit in our silence.

And finally, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” When evil rises up, Christians are called to respond from the core of our teaching. This is why the church exists – to name what is broken in the world and to stand up for justice.

Friends, this is about more than one or two little protests gone wrong. This is about the re-emergence of an evil that, if ignored by indifference, if allowed to become normalized in small steps, can take the whole world down an amoral pathway to the purest evil. But now we return to our earlier question…..how do we break the tyranny of sin? How do we remain faithful heirs of God’s kind of justice? How do we respond to this encroaching craziness?

• By opening our eyes to see that, even if a movement doesn’t hurt you, if it hurts your fellow man, it is your problem too.
• By teaching your children and your grandchildren what Jesus taught – that everyone belongs in God’s kingdom, without exception. By talking to them about Charlottesville, white supremacy, the truth about the KKK, what the Nazi flag actually represents. These lessons will spread out into the future and affect the world through those you influence with your words of truth.
• By speaking up at work or in your neighbourhood or amongst friends and colleagues when you hear talk of any religion, race or culture being excluded, isolated or oppressed.
• By praying for wisdom and guidance to respond to hate with God’s powerful love.
• By letting leaders know that we will not stand for the intolerance or oppression of any group of human beings; that we will not vote for leaders who do.
• By working hard to become a community right here, where people don’t even have to think about whether or not they’ll be fully welcomed…they just feel the love from the moment they walk in.
Joseph broke the tyranny of sin by forgiving in love instead of seeking vengeance in hate.

Jesus broke the tyranny of sin by embracing someone that everyone else wanted to exclude. The church cannot be a place that ignores the pain of the world. We cannot escape the suffering of our brothers and sisters, no matter how comfortable things might be for us personally. The church must speak out when the tyranny of sin from the past threatens to become the tyranny of sin in the present.

But our God is a great God, who always brings good news. And the good news for us today is this. Love will always prevail in the long run, because hate eats people up from the inside, and exhausts them. Love is far more powerful and enduring. Love fulfills us and transforms us and brings peace to us and to those around us. That holy love can even touch the hearts of the haters and bring them peace, because in the end Love Trumps hate! It is God’s love, my dear friends, working in us and through us, that will break the tyranny of sin.
Thanks be to God. Amen

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Sermon TSP ELEVENTH Sunday After Pentecost Year A 20 August 2017 By: Reverend Susanne Priest in the Anglican Communion of Canada.